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Moby Dick: Ishmael's Epic Voyage Revisited

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Moby Dick: Ishmael's Epic Voyage Revisited Trabajo Fin de Grado “Moby Dick: Ishmael’s Epic Voyage Revisited” .Mario Glera Hernando. Directora María Benita Nadal Blasco Facultad de Filosofía y Letras Año 2014 Repositorio de la Universidad de Zaragoza – Zaguan http://zaguan.unizar.es Table of Contents □ Introduction □ Moby Dick: characteristics of classical epics - Features: 1) Objective and omniscient poet. 2) Deeds of superhuman strength and valour. 3) Setting. 4) Supernatural and-or otherworldly forces. 5) Sustained elevation of style. 6) Hero - The Journey of the Hero: 1) Departure. 2) Initiation. 3) Return. □ Conclusions 2 Moby Dick: Ishmael’s Epic Voyage Revisited Introduction Moby Dick is usually regarded as "the greatest American novel ever written" (Rudd) by many critics and important authors such as D.H Lawrence, who said that it was "the greatest book of the sea ever written"(168). No, doubt Herman Melville´s sixth novel is an epic that deals with several classic epic themes such as knowledge, fate, revenge and the self. However, what makes it a more singular novel is that it also displays scientific and natural knowledge. Besides, personal experience in the whaling world is provided by Ishmael´s voice, a novice whaler who "not simply watches but deciphers what he sees" (Arvin 1). The purpose of this paper is to prove that Herman Melville´s Moby Dick is an epic that joins together two traditions of epics and mingles them in order to build a more complex epic. In Melville´s epic a hero takes a circular voyage and comes back to civilization renewed and reborn with a greater knowledge, "beginning with Odysseus, Beowulf and Sir Gawain- not to mention Spiderman or Batman- the epic culminates around the hero's journey of self discovery and spiritual maturation" (webpages.uidaho.edu, 2014). This triumphant hero shares his knowledge making a "retelling of that story" on his return (Sten and Sten 82) acting somehow like a preacher allowing us to begin our own trip of self-discovery. In order to carry out the analysis following Thomas Drake´s study of classical epic will serve as te basis for the analysis of Moby Dick. Campbell´s A Hero with a Thousand Faces will stand as the guideline to approach the stages of the hero´s journey: departure, initiation and return. Repositorio de la Universidad de Zaragoza – Zaguan http://zaguan.unizar.es Moby Dick: characteristics of classical Before focusing on Moby Dick, the concept of epic should be defined: a classical epic is "a long narrative poem in a dignified style about the deeds of a traditional or historical hero" (yourdictionary.com). The first examples that come to mind are The Iliad, Beowulf together with John Milton´s Paradise Lost and Dante´s Divine Comedy. Thus, these four works are of great importance when approaching Moby Dick because Melville's novel contains numerous similarities with them and the epic tradition. According to Thomas Drake, the most common features found in classic epics are the following: 1) The poet remains objective and omniscient. 2) It involves deeds of superhuman strength and valour. 3) Vast setting, the action spans not only geographical but also often cosmological space. 4) It involves supernatural and-or otherworldly forces. 5) Sustained elevation of style. 6) The plot centres around a Hero of unbelievable stature. (webpages.uidaho.edu) 4 1) Omniscient and objective poet The exemplary novels mentioned above tend to fulfil the six features and Moby Dick does as well. Significantly, there are several chapters in this novel that do not contribute to the development of the plot but are devoted to other issues that have little or nothing to do with Moby Dick´s hunt. These chapters are regarded as the ones which granted the novel "the unpopularity of methodically describing the appearance and activity of the whale and the various processes involved in whaling"(Ward 164). It is due to those chapters that the novel was not praised as it is today, because neither common readers nor critics could accept "what appeared to them an incongruous blend of formal exposition and traditional narration, a partial novel that could also serve as a handbook or treatise on whaling" (Ward 164). As a matter of fact, Moby Dick seems to be sometimes in disagreement with the first feature, although, Ishmael is subjective, his point of view is commonsensical so he can be regarded as the voice of Melville in the novel. Ishmael is usually caught reflecting on his own thoughts, and as stated recently, his voice is just a mask of Melville´s, thus Melville´s opinion is given on the different matters Ishmael´s digressions lead him to, "And what are you, reader, but a Loose-Fish and a Fast-Fish, too?" (330). For sure, "there is nothing on which Melville digresses that does not serve his meaning" (cs.princeton.ed) and even those unpopular chapters stand for a metaphorical meaning that can only be grasped with further analysis of the same. With some sense it can be said that Moby Dick "is not a classic epic, for we feel too strongly the individual who wrote it"(Melville and Kazin 41) and although we read Ishmael´s words, we hear Melville´s ideas. The very first sentence of Moby Dick, "You can call me Ishmael" (1), is known Repositorio de la Universidad de Zaragoza – Zaguan http://zaguan.unizar.es worldwide as one of the best openings in American literature, however, "Ishmael is not the given name of Melville´s narrator; it is the name he appropriates for himself" (Sten and 82). Ishmael writes and narrates the story of the hunt of Moby Dick when he has finished the epic quest and has returned to civilization. He already knows the end because he has lived that story, "his relationship to other people is that of a story-teller to his audience" (Dryden 113) and he cannot help to "foreshadow events to come" (cs.princeton.ed). Maybe, a proof of his 'foreshadowing behaviour', can be found at the beginning of his narration when he tells that he finds himself "pausing before coffin warehouses"(1), and in the end where he asserts that he is saved by "the coffin- lifebouy"(469). 2) Deeds of superhuman strength and valour Moby Dick may not seem to contain deeds of superhuman strength and valour, since everyone seems like real people without any superhuman power. Nevertheless, what is beyond human features is not physical but mental. Captain Ahab´s monomania in pursuing the "Great Leviathan" (56) as often called, is far beyond any common behaviour. He not only risks his own life, but also is willing to sacrifice the life of any person in the crew for the sole purpose of achieving his insane revenge. "Dismembered, unnaturally vengeful, self-slave and self-exiled from the land and the women" (González Moreno 12), Ahab conceals a self-destructive obsession with revenge. This revenge is related to the other superhuman features of epics, although in a different scope than expected. 6 3) Setting Usually the settings of epics are vast and they often involve cosmological locations. As can be appreciated in Beowulf , the setting includes real locations in Denmark and Geatland, southern Sweden. However, it also includes magical or mystical locations such as the cave where Grendel and his mother lived. In Moby Dick, the setting is a vast metaphorical sea usually cosmologically extrapolated, "Aloft, like a royal czar and king, the sun seemed giving this gentle air to this bold and rolling sea; even as a bride to groom"(442). Thus, although the voyage depicted in the novel is placed at the real oceans of this world, the reader usually may feel immersed in the middle of the universe just as little Pip does when he falls from the boats, "Pip saw the multitudinous, God-omnipresent, coral insects, that out of the firmament of waters heaved the colossal orbs"(343). With regard to time setting, epics usually tell an ancient story set in a remote past, for instance, Beowulf is placed in the year 500 A.D. In contrast, Moby Dick is set in the mid-nineteenth-century, when the book was first published (1851) and it does not recall events that happened long ago. 4) Supernatural and-or otherworldly forces Epics involve supernatural and/or otherworldly forces, commonly portrayed as great harmful monsters such as dragons or other mythological creatures. The dragon that killed Beowulf , Cetus the monster that kidnapped Andromeda, Geryon in the Divine Comedy or Satan in Paradise Lost, are clear examples that epics contain unearthly figures. Moby Dick not only contains a monster of these qualities, but the whole book is named after it. It is said that Herman Melville took inspiration for his Repositorio de la Universidad de Zaragoza – Zaguan http://zaguan.unizar.es novel from a real albino whale that used to be spotted round the Pacific Ocean during the nineteenth century. Described as a "renowned monster, who had come off victorious in a hundred fights with his pursuers" (melville.org), the real albino whale was known as 'Mocha Dick'. Depicted throughout the whole novel as a monster of colossal dimensions, the chapter that better exemplifies the unnatural features of Melville´s white whale is chapter 42, titled 'The Whiteness of the Whale'. In this chapter some of the qualities of the whale such as its "ubiquity" (122) and peculiar colour that make it a godly creature, are well explained by Herman Melville, who accordingly places Moby Dick along with epic supernatural creatures. Is it that by its indefiniteness it shadows forth the heartless voids and immensities of the universe, and thus stabs us from behind with the althought of annihilation, when beholding the white depths of the milky way? Or is it, that as in essence whiteness is not so much a colour as the visible absence of colour; and at the same time the concrete of all colours; is it for these reasons that there is such a dumb blankness, full of meaning, in a wide landscape of snows—a colourless, all-colour of atheism from which we shrink?(163) 5) Language and form With regard to the style of Moby Dick, it can be said that in numerous ways the novel does not fulfil the sustained elevation of style proper of classical epics, due to its objective and factual knowledge about whaling and other deeds.
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